Blue peanut butter, red tortillas add a tint of cancer prevention

Doug Beghtel/The OregonianBy mixing a toxin-fighting dye with peanut butter, an Oregon State University researcher says, you could add a layer of protection in case the peanuts had the carcinogen aflatoxin.

In a few years, preventing cancer might be as easy as spreading bright-blue peanut butter on toast -- or on a red tortilla.

While many people think fake food coloring is unhealthy -- M&M's killed off its red candy for 11 years over cancer fears -- some Oregon State University scientists say they've found two dyes that might help prevent tumors: Blue No. 2 and Red No.40, which now color many products (including M&Ms).

The scientists looked at dyes because they are chemically similar to compounds that bind to cancer-causing chemicals, limiting their ability to mutate DNA. So the Oregon State group fed rainbow trout aflatoxin, a cancer-causing poison made by mold that grows on tree nuts, peanuts and corn. Then they fed dyes to the trout. The fish that ate Red No. 40 and Blue No. 2 got many fewer liver tumors. Red No. 40 also seemed to fight a dibenzopyrene, a carcinogen in cigarette smoke. The group is now moving to animal tests.

Aflatoxin is not much of a problem in U.S. foods, thanks to good testing, OSU professor Gayle Orner says. But liver cancer plagues parts of Asia and Africa where mold more commonly contaminates the crops.

That gave Orner the PB blues. By mixing the toxin-fighting dye with peanut butter, she says, you could add a layer of protection in case the peanuts had aflatoxin. You could dye corn tortillas or chips, too.

Would anyone older than 10 eat blue peanut butter? "It's certainly a concern," Orner says. You'd have to teach people to get past their aesthetic qualms or fear of fake colors.

People "think that anything synthetic is bad and everything natural is good," she says. "Yet here we have a case of a natural product, aflatoxin, which is one of the most potent carcinogens known ... and a synthetic product that does a good job of fighting it."